What a careful reader will take away from Barack Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father is not only that the president used to eat dog meat, but more importantly, that he identifies with dog-eaters. He wants us to understand that he is one of them. Obama’s most severe critics on the right think of Obama as a socialist, for example, Dinesh D’Souza, or Stanley Kurtz in his exhaustively-researched bookRadical-in-Chief. Obama used to attend the annual “Socialist Scholars Conference” in New York, which was a hard-core affair; I went to a couple of them, and they weren’t for the curious. But there is something far more visceral, more existential to the president’s dislike of the United States, and that arises from his early residence in the Third World, and his identification with the people of the Third World whose lives are disrupted by the creative destruction that America has unleashed.

Obama is the son of a Kenyan Muslim father, the stepson of an Indonesian Muslim, and the child, most of all, of an American anthropologist who devoted her career to protecting Indonesian traditional life against the depredations of the global marketplace. Her doctoral dissertation, “Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving against all odds,” celebrated traditional cultures hanging on desperately in the face of the global economic marketplace.

Ms. Dunham was not only a Communist fellow-traveler, but the sort of 1960s woman who (as we used to say) “put her body on the line,” first by marrying two Third World men, and then by spending her career in the Third World. It is no surprise that Obama considers the Third World morally superior to the United States. Consider this description of the Jakarta of his childhood from Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father: “And yet for all that poverty [in the Indonesian marketplace], there remained in their lives a discernible order, a tapestry of trading routes and middlemen, bribes to pay and customs to observe, the habits of a generation played out every day beneath the bargaining and the noise and the swirling dust. It was the absence of such coherence that made a place like [the Chicago housing projects] so desperate.” Obama had chances to compare the orderliness and regularity of traditional life with the rough-and-tumble of American capitalism, and chose to identify with the former.

215 Comments, 82 Threads

1.
Jack Hawkins

logically, what this affair tells us is that David Axelrod and the entire Obama political machine NEVER READ Dreams from My Father, and that Obama himself never read it! Consider: if they knew that the dog eating was in the “autobiography”, would they have attacked the Romney’s vacation? Or are they even dumber than we think?

It reprents the goals his father had. That he has used them to form his own world view has been a disaster for us. He has no real feel what being American means because his formative years were filled with anti-American ideology and rhetoric, the end result having a President of the US who wants to turn it into a third world country to pay for our hubris. Indeed, he never entered mainland America until his late teens.

This is the problem of not vetting the candidates. for cult worship of our hopes and dreams over our realities.

You are correct. Guess I should have made it clear that Dreams From My Father was actually dreams OF his father and his father’s vision. The fact that his father was in his life so little, it seems that Obama (or who ever wrote the book) was giving some sort of history to a father he never knew…all he knew was the dream of his father, not the reality.

I’ll pick up that point. Bill Ayers’s descriptions of Obama’s supposedly wonderful, chaotic childhood with “Lolo” not only reveal Obama’s preference for Third World morality; they also push the lie that Obama had a dad who cared for him. He didn’t, and it bugs him. Barry can’t grow up. He’s still trying to convince himself and us that he’s worthy of a father’s love. He should just be a good dad to the kids he has and move on.

I read both Obama’s books, and he freely acknowledged that the second one was partly written by his staff, while he credits his mother with suggestions and memories from the first one. My strong impression at the time was that more than one person had written Dreams…. It had too many authorial voices for one author. Also, we should pay attention to primitivism among progressive writers, artists, and journalists. They are regressive and return us to the unspoiled bond with the beautiful mother. I wrote about that here: http://clarespark.com/2012/04/12/the-donkey-serenade-and-buffetts-rule/. Primitivism has been in vogue, but especially after the Great War, when it was popular as a foil to the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro, emboldened by service in the U.S. Army. Edna Ferber’s Showboat (1926) comes to mind, which utterly infantilizes black folk.The Broadway show and movie were nothing like the book.

Obama isn’t one of us and he isn’t one with the US. Occasionally, he uses examples that seem plucked right from the 1950s or 60s, as if the America he “knows” is simply an abstraction, a subject he studied somewhere, sometime.

Your comments regarding Obama’s mother and her proclivity to subsume herself, her culture, her country is quite a powerful reminder. Click. So much makes sense in that context.

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. But doesn’t the fact that he was elected with a 53% majority and an electoral college landslide say something about the American people as well?

The unpleasant reality is that that huge numbers of inhabitants of what we know for the time being as the “United States of America” (I would estimate between 20-30%) absolutely HATE the concept of America and the principles upon which it was founded. They new quite well that Obama shared their views and most enthusiastically voted for him.

Nevertheless, his winning margin was provided by a smaller group of deluded souls that either were naive enough to buy into the “hope and change” crap, or were SWPL types who could preen about how noble they were to vote for a black man.

Whether Obama gets re-elected depends on those on the margin who conclude they got hosed and switch this time.

I bought a gun the weekend after the election in 2008. If Obama gets re-elected I will conclude that I made the right decision to do that, and that the majority of the inhabitants of the “United States of America” now hate America.

Nah. The deluded souls who voted for Obummer were simply angry. Angry at the Republican Party for the Iraq war, and angry that their 401K’s were chopped in half by election day from the previous year’s peak. Independents tend to vote their own personal situations. Period.

In a 2-party system it is a binary choice. In multiparty systems like Europe, it is no different – just look at all the changes in Greek government in the last 5 years. Not that changing the party in power made any difference to their financial situation, though.

This essay looks very familiar and the analysis is consistent with your upbringing. You are a staunch “friend of Israel” who is obligated to remind the American voters that they made a mistake by electing somebody so different from you. It seems that a social liberal is threatening enough to Islam that Obama should get his “friend of Israel” badge unquestioned.

Years ago Jesse Jackson asked us to refer to him as an African-American. Then we elected one of his friends. They have acted consistently with what they said prior to the election. I don’t blame you for wanting to rain on their parade but the last 4 years have produced better hooks than anthropology. You won’t find the hooks in his books.

So Goldman as a Jewish “friend of Israel” is incapable of writing dispassionate and accurate analysis about BHO? Would you also say that the critiques of BHO by gentile writers such as Cal Thomas or Angelo Codevilla are also due to their being “friend(s) of Israel”?

You shouldn’t use the tag, “Krakow” as it’s an insult to the memoires of Polish heroes such as Tadeusz Kościuszko, Jan Karski and John Paul II.

You can’t win with an anti-Semite. Here, I’m writing about Third World rancor against America (with reference to Latin America) — the issue Islam never comes up — and Crack-cow here says, “That’s because he’s Jewish.”

Look, Krakow, I am a Jew and a Zionist and I view Obama as a psychopath. Your problem is that you cannot consider my affiliations as independent of my assessment of Obama’s character disorder. It is a human failing that allows for constant demagoguery among humans. Perhaps you will understand this point best through a common joke. “Just because I am paranoid does not mean that someone isn’t out to kill me.”

Purposely conflating essentially independent factors produces garbage. You will never understand Jews if you insist that my Judaism causes me to view Obama as a psychopath and you will never understand whether Obama is a psychopath if you insist on noting that some Jew called him a psychopath. We doom ourselves and our children by poor thinking habits.

You are missing the point. The way people like krakow use the term, “friend of Israel” is just a euphemism, like “zionist”, really meaning “Jew” or, more precisely, “a member of the USA / world Jewish conspiracy”.

If Obama isn’t reelected, it would all be the nefarious work of the evil Jews, you see.

Let’s be honest. Crack-Cow is definitely trying to change the subject. They weren’t cheering Obama in Berlin because he is a Third World sympathizer but because his mother was an identifier with European socialism and these guys think that with Obama’s skin color and a false identification with downtrodden peoples the right sort can get a foothold back to power.

The last thing these guys want to come out is that Obama had these experiences so mommy and granddaddy could be good communists.

I’m not sure I follow the logic of your thoughts. I would suggest that you read what you wrote and explain again where you’re going with this. Alternatively, you could ask your psychiatrist to adjust your medication.

all i understand from them is that the writer is supposed to be jewish, people can be divided up on the basis if their attitude towards israel and a claim that president obama has acted as president in accord with his campaign promises.

the prominence of jews and israel in each paragraph suggests an unhealthy obsession with ‘the jews’.

Campaign promises are a test of the listener’s gullibility. What the leadership of their community had said prior to the election is more important and is consistent with how Obama has acted while in office. Jackson is a cleaver competitor for the money the government hands out. I use Jackson as an example but there are many more.

that even without having anthropologist and Communist fellow-traveler Stanley Ann Dunham as a mother, Muslim and communist Barack Obama Sr. as a father, communist Frank Marshall Davis as a mentor, former Black Muslim Jeremiah Wright as both mentor and pastor, and murderous, unrepentant terrorist William Ayers as political ally and ghostwriter, there are many more people all across the country today who share Obama’s deep-seated hate-filled sentiments and mindset against America than we could possibly ever have imagined, sad to say.

Anthropologists like Obamas mother and socialists make the same mistake. They see economics and culture as a zero sum game.

Milton Friedman wrote: “Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”

It is a way of thinking which cannot be changed. In this mindset the world is interpreted from a mythical reference point to which we must return. A culture is something which must remain forever static like a diorama in the Natural History museum. Wealth and resources are not creative dynamic forces for these folks but fixed quantities which can only be held by one individual at the expense of another. Humans are not part of nature, they are taking something away from it and any changes that occur are bad our fault.

This also explains the antipathy toword Israel by the left. New nations and population changes are not allowed. Legitimacy derives from some sort of mythical golden age when only “indigenous” peoples and cultures lived in harmony with their natural surroundings. Israel can only succeed by taking away something from the “true” inhabitants of the region.

Obama chose “hope and change” as a motto and liberals call themselves progressives, but what they really want is regression, not progress.

Dog may have been on the menu when Obama was in Indonesia and hence he includes it to give a native legitimacy to his narrative. There are 247 mammalian species listed as endemic to Indonesia, none of them related to dogs, so someone brought them there at some point. It is no more authentic to the locality than Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“There’s this terrible tendency, and most economic fallacies derive from that tendency, to think of everything as what the game theorists have come to describe a zero-sum game. To think there’s a fixed pie. If I get more, you must get less.”

I have been reading Spengler for about 6 or 7 years because I like even those repetitive essays with which I disagree. I am not convinced that Spengler prefers Romney over Obama. Maybe Spengler is just building up leverage in anticipation of indirect negotiations with Obama. As a former conservative and now independent, I think that the extremes deserve each other. A bloodbath between the two extremes would be ideal.

It is highly probable that the futurists are right. 50 to 100 years from now, food and energy may not be a concern and a perceived new common enemy to the human race will surface. Once the Muslim Brotherhood begins to republish futurist articles, and not just Spengler’s, then we will know that we a have worthy foe/partner.

What the devil is he babbling about? Spengler has said more than once he prefers Santorum to Romney, but anything over Obama. Which I don’t think is an uncommon feeling. The rest….simply unintelligeble.

Tsvi Bisk is director of the Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking and author of The Optimistic Jew: A Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century (Maxanna Press, 2007). He is also the THE FUTURIST’s contributing editor for Strategic Thinking.

Good post. When Obama says “And yet for all that poverty [in the Indonesian marketplace], there remained in their lives a discernible order, a tapestry of trading routes and middlemen, bribes to pay and customs to observe, the habits of a generation played out every day beneath the bargaining and the noise and the swirling dust. It was the absence of such coherence that made a place like [the Chicago housing projects] so desperate.” he has a point…but what he fails to comprehend is that the environment of the Chicago housing projects is not a product of capitalism but rather of exclusion from capitalism, very largely as a result of government actions.

I guess Obama never read Burke because Burke would of understood the Indonesian marketplace as the natural development of an organization whereas the Chicago projects is the predictable result of applying some abstract theory from the top down.

Bingo!
I might also add that the leftists, who swoon over foreign traditional cultures, are relentless in their largely successful attempts to eradicate any WESTERN customs, traditions, and religion.
(Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Western Civ has got to go!)

It’s easy to understand how Obama got that way, but what on earth made so many First-World Americans gullible enough to elect him? Is there a permanent 45%+ contingent of Americans who check their brains at the door before voting?

There’s still a large portion of Americans who consume the old media and that pretty much explains why they vote the way they do. They don’t know anything the media don’t want them to know about Obama’s background and record.

Just when and how did Congress and the FCC ban “free TV.” All I have to do is stick a wire out the window and I have free TV; there’s not much on it that I like, but 4 networks plus public are all free still.

They might as well have banned it. The transition to digital reduced the range one could recieve a watchable signal by about a factor of 3. Unless you live right near the transmitting antenna, you can’t get a watchable picture, and the worst thing is that the sound is the first thing to drop out. With old analog TV, you could always get the sound even if the picture was breaking up. Of course, the intention was to force everyone ontop cable, and the only reason stations still broadcast at all, is that you must broadcast to be eligible for the “must carry” rules that apply to cable.

I am not sure “old media” is responsible for so many Obama voters in 08. I live in a college town, and the Obama mania here was a thing to behold. All those young people and their professors definately were not tied to “old media.” They did not like George W Bush at all, he just never was able to appeal to the so called intellectuals and their wannabes, the students. Then there was the race factor, the opportunity to elect America’s first black President, and therefore become acceptable in the eyes of the world as they imagined it. Then there was McCain’s non-campaign. And McCain’s age – an old guy with an old persona. Being a war hero didn’t count for anything because all the professors were war protestors, maybe even rioters back then, and that was so cool to their wannabes. No, I am afraid there really has been a shift in the American electorate, thanks to our educational system, that bodes ill for freedom and self reliance in this republic. Maybe it will be better when the baby boomers (my own generation) finally die and the radical intellectuals among us depart the scene and quit influencing gullible people, and believe me, college students are the most gullible of all people. But having a stronger candidate than McCain should help. I have not been a big fan of Romney, but I think he is organized and funded to run a much better campaign – he has even whipped some butt this past week – and we might be able to get back to something resembling normalcy, at least for a while.

Police and Tom: Thanks for the good words, but it was just a spelling error. As soon as I saw my post on screen, I realized I had misspelled “cannibal”. “Canibbling” sounds a lot like “canoodling”. It’s a scream, aint it?

Donna Quixote:
He is a hero for the following reason: As the son of the commander of all naval forces in the Pacific, he was a very a high value prisoner of the North Vietnamese. They wanted him to agree to be released while his comrads remained in prison, which would have given his captors a propaganda coup as a demoralizing influence on US servicemen, who would know then that the children of the well placed could be spared the horrible treatment they would receive as common POW’s. He refused, knowing full well of the brutal treatment he would receive for his refusal. He didn’t break even under inhuman treatment, and for that he still suffers physical disabilities. It is easy to find and read the story. Yes, he is a hero.

People voted for Obama because they thought it would make other people think they were “cool”. Has to do with the social mores of today where “everyone is putting on a show” which becomes more obvious the closer you get to LA. But it’s all over the nation.

“style points”

Nothing more.

In the past, people used to do things based on their own personal needs. When the Victorian era came, the middle class was a relatively new social construct and people started doing things more to identify with “belonging” than the results of their actions/jobs/upbringing did. ie: The bricklayer acted/spoke/dressed a certain way but the mid-level bank manager was indistinguishable from the hotel manager, school headmaster, industrial draftsman or other well-paid “non-blue-collar” labor.

It was always much talked about and with women’s suffrage largely emanating from pre WW-II women who were largely “trapped” as housewives (yeah, I said it), moms and denied access to the workplace except in certain jobs, things began to change.

WW-II provided more energy to that cause while women took up tasks and employment formerly held solely by men (Rosie the riveter, etc) but after the war, things returned back to a status quo that largely was satisfactory.

The new women’s movement proved successful in the 60′s and unfortunately was co-opted by the female contingent of socialists. The destruction of the term “equality” which, even in Victorian society was largely accepted as a social norm, but with boundaries. The gym, the smoking room, clubs for men only (GOLF Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden) and so on.

Back to the point. With each successive episode of social change, people generally became more self-conscious. Not self-aware but the other. Television put that on a fast-track and people could write up and have on the tube a socially “relevant” issue on the tube exposed to millions of people faster than a newspaper or magazine article.

“What is hip” became very important to Americans in general and certain people specifically. Had TV never been invented, I doubt we would’ve seen a president Clinton. “Oh, he’s so COOL…didja see him play the sax on Letterman?” Ugh. Gag.

Nixon vs Kennedy debate. No one ever seems to talk about the substance of the debate which people argue that Nixon trounced Kennedy’s lofty rhetoric with solid facts and examples…but he looked pale and unattractive on TV compared to the freshly tanned and newly medicated (thus more robust) JFK.

“Ew, I’m not gonna vote for Nixon..he looked ikky on TV.”

McCain wasn’t “cool”….Obama came off looking and sounding very “hip” and “with it”. The media has come into its own as the false template it is and the major route of escape people take to alleviate their humdrum lives. Thus, reality and fiction have become confused.

So if it’s on TV, it must be true. Like the way CSI agents can get a miniscule amount of DNA off of a half-eaten toaster-pastry the perp left behind and a guy with six-million dollar legs can run at 60 mph. Yes, both are fiction but one more easily dismissed than the other. Miracles occur on TV every night. Why not with the thrill of Americans being able to help write the script by electing the most cool, most hip president ever.

Something akin to everyone liking “Sticks Dynamite” from the show “Happy Days”…the tall, skinny black kid who was just so darn likable, even in 1955 Milwaukee.

People can no longer recognize scripted crap vs. just crap. And the reality line is invisible. If some talking head like Brian Williams says that Obama is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it must be so.

But, I speak of the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who cannot process information correctly. Add to that, TV appeals to the emotional center of the brain, which isn’t that hard to do. Ask any victim of an ABC after-school special. Humans are 99% visual/emotional. It takes work to sort the emotional from the rational. My dad hated TV except for “football games and space shots” as he put it. He occasionally liked “Columbo” and laughed a lot at “Get Smart”. But most of the time he was working on something, prime-time TV did nothing for him as he grew up in the depression and would rather fix the lawnmower or build a cabinet in the workshop than waste hour upon hour in front of the tube. That duty was relegated to my brother and me.

But largely, Americans have inverted the priority of necessity vs. looks and appearances. Sure, it’s always been an issue but never more than now where drinking the “right” coffee or bottled water, using the “right” buzz-words, accepting the “right” social mores is now more important than reality.

I almost just got fired for not adhering to the politically correct thoughts of today’s hypersensitive world. Nothing very serious but by today’s “standards” a gross breach of etiquette. Even more than a “triple-dog-dare” in Jean Shepherd’s childhood world.

So voting for Obama was what the “cool” people did. Had nothing to do with his message other than it was less inspiring than MacDonald’s “I’m luvin’ it” or the three stupid frogs for Budweiser. The sound-bite, 20-second video clip and constant white noise of “probama” crap took the place of legitimate discussion, debate and rational thought. And when people left the polls, they couldn’t wait to tell everyone who they voted for; As if to say, “See? I’m just as cool as you…I voted for Obama. You HAVE to know I belong.”

It’s pretty disgusting but the psychology of the left worked. But people who live in real-ville know what happens when emotions triumph over reason. You get OJ acquittals, Zimmerman convictions and a black, national-socialist president.

It is simpler than that. People want free stuff. Obama promised free stuff. Remember that famous fool who said on TV that “Obama will pay my mortgage and take care of my car payments”, or something to that effect? Lots of people think that way. And not just down and out inner city dwellers, either. The super rich Titans of Finance all voted for and contributed to Obama as well. And they are the biggest beneficiaries of government provided free stuff on the planet. They got bailed out. Their enterprises still exist. If it wasn’t for Bush’s TARP, Bernanke’s money printing, and Obama’s policies, those TBTF banks would be gone, and the entire world financial system would have gone down with them.

Anywho, spengler out the finger on it. People have constently mistaken Obama’s aloofness and analytical behavior with intelligence. But, he’s not that bright. He’s aloof because he isan’t part of the culture, and doesn’t understand it. We are not equals, we are not even master/slave. We are objects of interest to him.

Lastly, a quibble. What is destroying the third world in not America per se, but the American ideal. We went through exactly the same transformation they went through, and came out the other side rich and powerful. The third world seeks to emulate the result. There is nothing preventing any third world country from shutting the borders and retaining traditional culture indefinately. The only example I can think of that has done this is Bhutan.

In terms of being closed off, yes. But communism has destroyed traditional society there far more thoroughly than free markets could ever have done. Just as it did everywhere else when it was given enough time.

Good comments about us going through the same transformation they are going through. I would add that it was easier here than in Europe because we were a much more open and mobile society at the time. It was pretty hard on the Native Americans though and still is.

I am not sure that any of the 3rd World countries can really shut the door. The first example that comes to my mind is the Venetian Republic. They tried to do exactly that and Napoleon kicked the door open. Things were quite rough in Venice for a couple of generations.

What is culture? A culture is a growing concern. It is something that evolves and grows and developes over time. If it doesn’t, it is doomed. There is no “Amercan” culture. There never has been. American culture is the ultimate “Borg” culture, assimilating, assimilating. It is the most powerful cultural force on the planet, simply because it harnesses the most powerful cutural forces from every single nation on Earth. American culture is in essence every culture in the world distilled down to one intoxicating elixer.

Progessive and third worlders think they can take just a tiny sip of poison, foolishly imagining they can turn a frog into only half a prince. They find it doesn’t work that way, even the tiniest sip is their doom. The blame America for this, but in fact American culture is the ultimate expression of multiculuralism, where all cultures are homogenized into one.

that while your delving into aspects of his mother’s biography does add significantly to our understanding of Obama’s identity and his dislike for our country, it’s worth pointing out that Obama’s mentor Jeremiah Wright’s hate-filled “God Damn America” is a mindset more widely shared by people across the country than we could possibly have imagined.

It’s easy to be angry and a victim. Question is, why are they so comfortable there? Ans: Because they are not only allowed to be there, but encouraged to remain there. Better to be pissed off with a government check coming in rather than pissed off and having to work for a living, eh? No?

That way, the “just-ness” of it can be made a marketing tool and by having people feel sorry for you while you scream, “I don’t want your pity (just your money)” is a much easier way to live because you have so many fellow travelers who will take up the battle for you, thus sparing your fragile ego and allowing you to believe you’re in a just place.

Sad, really. We all know this but they don’t. It’s akin to the lottery winner thinking they are every bit as accomplished at the country club as the self-made millionaire, the factory owner, the architect and the airline CEO.

Notice I did not say “better than” but “just as good” as in, a sense of belonging. But should a conversation start, the lottery winner has no common touchstone with any of the others. They cannot relate, cannot process information the same way. They all have millions but the lottery winner has no appreciation for how the other guys got theirs and the other guys probably resent the lottery winner. Interesting turnabout since the formerly poverty-stricken lottery winner hated the businessmen on general principle.

I’ve found two outlooks in the Third World. In the Anglosphere,(India, Sri Lanka, the former English outposts in the Caribbean) people look at the U.S. favorably – as something to aspire to.

In the rest of the Third World that was never English, or anti–colonials like Obama’s parents, the view is very anti-American. Envy (which seems to be the core of Obama’s soul), suspicion, and distrust are how they look at us. It is a worldview totally devoid of logic.

You may find that the Anglo countries did not fall to communism whereas many other non-anglophone countries that had been part of foreign colonies, in the east and Africa did: Vietnam, Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, though not, interestingly, Kenya.

The Left wants us to leave the poor Abbos alone, to blacksmith primitively. You mean they don’t have to provide health care for their workers, or retirement plans, or maternity leave, or have to meet emmissions standards (those dung fires are sooooo green), or employ white people?
Unfortunately, our “primitve” businesses have to do all these things, and more. But primitives can do anything. Isn’t squalor and disease and suffering so quaint? Maybe it’ll get us a grant to study them! Oh! Better get my shots. Don’t want any of that cool culture making me sick.

Someday, hope and changefully, some pac will make the movie of young Barry’s life through the young adult life. It won’t be starring Denzel or Will.
I am glad that you read the book David, so that I don’t have to.

You say – It was the absence of such coherence that made a place like [the Chicago housing projects] so desperate.” Obama had chances to compare the orderliness and regularity of traditional life with the rough-and-tumble of American capitalism, and chose to identify with the former.

the Chicago housing projects are not a product of capitalism but of Lyndon Johnson’s socialism

So Obama ascribes the failure of socialism to capitalism – what else is new?
and you fail at it too

For all of the snarky feminazis out there. This is from an article in the deseret news this morning. I don’t know why this doesn’t get more play in the news.

While the Romneys are worth as much as $250 million, her sincerity is sometimes disarming.

She offers cookies she baked from her Welsh grandmother’s recipe to reporters on the campaign bus. Aides say she has never used a paid nanny or cleaning service to help raise children or maintain multiple homes. And she jokes about cleaning dirty bathrooms, cooking for a huge family and her own health struggles.

It’s probably true that the most transcendant principle that obama operates from is hatred of America. It is probably more fundamental than his racism, more fundamental than his marxism, more fundamental than his class hatreds, and more fundamental than his egomania.

Spengler is correct that is all flows from his mother, butressed by his nominal father, stepfather, and decades of oozing around leftist fever swamps.

If the world survives, this country will be laughed at for centuries for a national stupidity that rivals the worst of Germany and Rome.

“It’s probably true that the most transcendant principle that obama operates from is hatred of America. It is probably more fundamental than his racism, more fundamental than his marxism, more fundamental than his class hatreds …”

Do not be deceived regarding the last point. Class hatred is a tool for them. The whole holy Trinity of race, class and gender is just a strategy. Obama is quite comfortable with his rich cronies and white radical buddies.

This is all about a disaffected group from the Middle trying to set itself up as the new High using the Low as cannon fodder. In the process, those among the old high that accommodate them will be coopted, at least as long as they are useful.

We read “1984″ as a dystopian novel, for them it’s a howto manual for making themselves like the Inner Party in that novel.

Our dear leader is far sightedly a setting us a good example by demonstrating that dog meat(and grasshopper) are good to eat, and good for you.After he and his Stalinists finish with the US, pet dogs, cats (and garden grasshoppers) will be the only affordable source of protein left to a beggared populace.watch for regime environmentalists claim that pets are an unsustainable source of excess carbon, while Moochelle mandates dog meat in school lunches,and regime food writers and chefs write about the pleasures of exotic alternative foods.

Great post Mr. Goodman! The president is a dog-eater. Chicago public housing. America hating. Kenyan Muslim. Obama’s mother married not one but TWO black guys. Communist fellow traveler. A mother’s revenge. Mr. Goldman, you are truly firing on all cylinders here, keep up the good work!

I’ve come to the conclusion that Obama has no core convictions or principles. He was against the mandate as a candidate, then embraced it. He would close Gitmo but didn’t. He would try KSM in New York but changed his mind. His health care reform would tame rapacious insurance companies but ended with a law that would give the insurance companies 30 million new customers. He was against war but then for it. These are the actions of a man who has no guiding moral compass. The only thing that moves Obama is a malignantly narcissistic belief in his own uniqueness(Krauthammer’s words). And when such people are repeatedly stymied and blocked, they grow more frustrated, shrill, angry, and lash out at real and imaginary enemies: fat cats, billionaires, racists, clingers to guns and God. I expect to see Obama grow increasingly maddened by the barrage of criticism he will get this time ( he was not criticized in 2008 even by McCain!) and wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t go off unhinged in a truly spectacular meltdown. Because it is all about him, not the country or its people.

He may have already had one in private. I doubt he’ll ever have a public one, he’s way too cold blooded. Goldman called him a sociopath. Such people are too detached from any emotions accept self-love.

Why is globalism a good thing? Everyone says this over and over but all I see is a great race to the bottom. There will always be someone, some country on top. It just won’t be us – unless we drop this globalism garbage. It will be another human rights violating dictatorship like China or Saudi Arabia or Venezuela and the entire planet will become a far darker place.

It’s a good thing because people live who would otherwise die. Two of the worst famines in history were in Bengal (1943) and China (1951-1961). Due to their integration into the global economy, these countries now feed themselves and are growing. I have never understood why it is virtuous for others to feed the starving but not for them to feed themselves.

Dogwatch: I don’t claim any expert knowledge, but in Vietnam and Korea dogs are bred and farmed like other foodstocks — culturally, you’re not eating the household pet but consuming a delicacy that’s also a rich source of protein. Dunno about Indonesia, but wouldn’t be surprised to learn the same is true there. Dog meat is often available in Vietnamese areas east of Los Angeles, though it’s not on the printed menu. And surely many are aware that horse meat is widely sold and prized in France — no, the flavor’s not like chicken but like steak, and, yes, I ate it guilt-free. Very good.

Obama’s hatred of America is beyond doubt and many of his pathologies are out in the open. Let’s not attack him with…er… a red herring.

A red herring, perhaps, but the perfect antidote to the all the dim-witted idiots who voted for him in 2008. The minute it gets trumpeted (perhaps by Trump himself?) in a way that gets it echoed in the MSM, his chances of being re-elected goes down sharply. Will the vegans be happy about voting for him then? Dog owners? PETA supporters? That’s a pretty large chunk of his (de) base.

It is the ridicule. A candidate who can be the butt of so many bad dog eating jokes is going to have a hard time recovering the esteem he once commanded. Nobody laughs at a messiah. If they are laughing, he must be just another schmuck. Gingrich drew blood with his crack about allowing The One to use his teleprompter in a debate. But this dog stuff is really hilarious.

Is dog-meat tough as Obama claims, or is that because he was eating strays? He can now afford $200-a-pound dog now, so he’s quit complaining. BTW, it is apparently ok for Muslims to eat dog, so that is no evidence that he is not. I saw a photo of the Dog-Eater tucking into a hot dog with a wary ferocity one often seen in hungry canines—like he could chow down on dog sushi while the animal fought to get away.

Yes Obama hates America and the Western Tradition. Yes he’s a Dog Eater. But who elected him President?

The answer: Blacks. Hispanics. And White Professional Women (who voted for him by 13% in 2008 and favor him by 16% now according to most polls). Hatred for America and its system is embedded inside great swaths of America.

Detroit, run by and for Blacks since 1973, and a Black Majority City overwhelmingly since the anti-White riots of 1967 ethnically cleansed the city, is 47% illiterate. It requires another State bailout. The Black urban core is not going to share in America’s bounty, they can’t become Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, or North Dakota oil roughnecks, or much of anything but permanent dependents because they lack even basic literacy, and Black run cities produce nothing but despair. While “nice White people” might want to practice “moral uplift” and the like ala “Dangerous Minds” the reality is that there is no solution to the Black failure in cities to achieve even minimal literacy.

For Hispanics, the situation is marginally better, but not by a lot. Hispanics too have failed to vault into Silicon Valley, oil and gas booms, or much of anything else. [Whole great swaths of Silicon Valley are mostly Asian/Indian, and many co-founders or CEOs are Asian and Indian; White racism is not the explanation for the failure for Facebook and Groupon and Foursquare and the rest to be dominated by Blacks and Hispanics.]

White Professional women too have their complaint against America. It has not provided them with sexy, dominant men. Instead you get guys who are worker drones, producing wealth and capital and safety, but not that excitement. A quick look at the best-sellers at USATODAY in today’s edition, or the top e-books, will show the desire for an overwhelmingly female readership for somewhat icky domination, either in the supernatural/pseudo-sci-fi variant or present day fantasies.

If you wonder why Obama is President, basically it is BECAUSE he hates America, and the American way, and Blacks, Hispanics, and educated White women for their own reasons, hate it too. The former two because they cannot be part of it (basically they have not been able to enter the cognitive elite and help create/own wealth); and the latter because their sex lives are non-existent in a world of material plenty.

[Middle Class Blacks and Hispanics also prefer Obama's anti-American Third World patronage approach. Not only for reasons of racial hatred, Louis Farrakhan and the enormous amount of wealth he has being the leading market indicator, but because they also cannot even as the Middle Class create the kind of Wealth that White/Asian America can. There is no Black Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Jerry Yang, etc. Third World Stasis is better for them than an option on wealth that never pays off, and cannot. Because they are not suited for it, by any reason.]

As during the glorious days in the former USSR, once they take over, commies elect themselves since they produce ‘facts,’ plus they own the press, plus they count the votes.

The fraud in the WH and his handlers know that very well.

America of the pre-1960s is gone; more broadly, Western Civilization has committed suicide – and nobody comes back from the realm of the dead.

As for the piece above, it’s another pathetic article, by and for armchair whiners. Finally, regarding Romney, he’s a re-run of Dole and McCain (running knowing fully well he will lose the ‘election’ – but expects some financial rewards afterwards, some buffalo steaks though and not dog meat).

“But there is something far more visceral, more existential to the president’s dislike of the United States, and that arises from his early residence in the Third World, and his identification with the people of the Third World whose lives are disrupted by the creative destruction that America has unleashed.”

Then I suggest both Barack and Michelle stop spending the filthy lucre of the United States in amounts that can only be described as egregious.

They can do this personally as well as regards that foul ever-increasing debt thingy.

Saul Alinsky knew the power of ridicule, that is why he recommended its use as a weapon in his tactical playbook.

Voters see the Presidency as a serious position requiring mature and serious people, and once a candidate is no longer viewed as a serious person, but is a figure of ridicule, it is pretty much over for him as a candidate. Thus, the more ridicule we can rain down on Obama the better, and the fact that it was his own campaign and allies that gave the opening for this little bit of jujitsu makes it all the more delicious.

Indonesians are absolutely filthy they throw their detritus into their rivers and streams, which are chock-a-block with rubbish and filth. They are very dirty people and anti-semites too. No wonder Pharaoh Hussein is cut from the same dung-stained cloth.

Habu Indonesia is no better and no worse than many third world countries such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, the Philippines etc all of which have rubbish and pollution everywhere. But as a people they are not personally filthy unlike many Indians, Pakistanis and Africans. Their personal cleanliness is far far better than most Africans and residents of the Indian sub-continent.

David, I’ve learned from harsh experience that one cannot win with hardcore fanatical Russophobes anymore than one can argue with anti-Semites. They wish to, in Brechts immortal phrase, elect a new people rather than have the people electing a new government. One might extend this though to the open borders crowd, look what electing a new people has done for Alta California. Nonetheless, with Whiskey’s it’s always about race or sex/female desire no matter how peripheral a woman’s desire is compared to a lifetime (per your comment when you dipped your toe into the treacherous waters of the manosphere with the ‘Sexless Japan’ article — every time you see a beautiful woman there is probably some man somewhere who is tired of having sex with her or vice versa).

The Orthodox Christians include ‘if I have looked upon the beauty of another, and been wounded by it’ or words to that effect in the prayers.

But perhaps it has always been thus, and not only with the Russians but with all peoples. Wretchard suggests as much.

Anyway, it’s about to be Yom Hashoah, coinciding (as it normally does, or does not?) with the birthday of a man who but for World War One, would’ve remained a penniless ranting petty artist in Vienna someplace, and Lenin (who was also born around this date) would’ve also remained a forgotten nobody in exile. So a good day to reflect.

And one more response to a commenter above — last time I checked, Indonesians not quite black. But Mr. Soetero’s role in young Barack’s life has been very thinly documented, as Angelo Codevilla pointed out in his fine essay The Chosen One. The subtext of that essay, if I read it correctly, was that the Dunhams were a CIA couple and their daughter was an example of the CIA attempting to co-opt fellow travellers for its own purposes blowing back on the U.S.

I suppose in the not so distant future since paying young Russian women to wear masks and spout obscenities in Russian Orthodox Churches is the rage, we shall soon see foreign paid subversives spewing obscenities in our churches, saying it’s all for free speech and the good. And in the realm of what Ephesians calls powers and principalities where the true string pullers of wickedness reside ahead of their Eternal Doom, they’re all cackling with delight at how we mortals get plaid for fools, led to hell by our ‘best intentions’.

It is rare to see the smallest slip from the estimable David Goldman. However, if I may say so, it is not and was not the “traditional rough and tumble of American captitalism” that gave us the anomie and dysfunction of the post ’60s Chicago housing projects,as he alludes. That bogeyman needs to be laid squarely on the doorstep of Great Society Socialism, of which Obama is but the latest, and hopefully, last stock character protagonist in this ever more inverted, and ever less instructive farce parading as morality play.

The upbringing is, I think, not determinative. I spent a good portion of my childhood in a third world country, and this gave me a different perspective on the country of my birth that caused me to love that country and yet practically despise those countrymen that did not properly appreciate it or took it for granted. This may have influenced my choice in marrying someone with a childhood experience in another third world country on the opposite side of the globe. I have a variety of acquaintances with backgrounds that have this one component in common. None, as far as I can tell share the virulent hatred of America exhibited by our president. But who knows? Maybe I’m a conservative version of—was it Pauline Kael that said she couldn’t understand how Nixon could be elected because she didn’t know anyone who had voted for him?

From the ages of 13 to 15, my family of six spent two years driving from Los Angeles to Argentina. Years 1973-75. Five star hotels, American schools, or long stretches of paved highways were not on the agenda. To get an idea of our lifestyle, on our way to Machu Picchu from Cuzco, my parents would not hear of taking the tourist train. Prefering instead to drive halfway there on rutted roads, sleep as usual in our vehicles, and catching the last leg on the local train crammed with native Quechua speakers, their chickens & pigs, and the six of us white Americans. With the exception of four months of Catholic school in the Ecuadorean jungle, our education consisted of learning Spanish and observing and interacting with the many varied populations of Spanish America.

Anyways, back in the good ol’ USA five years later, my sister is enrolled at Occidental College (year 1980) where as it happens, one of her required classes was American Culture, naturally taught by a committed Marxist. She still remembers being at wits end how she was going to manage to garner a passing grade while NOT buying into the Marxist presuppositions of the prof. Still has the class notes too. One of her fellow students was a certain Barry. Friendly enough, though not from all impressions a standout student, Barry & my sister exchanged accounts of their experiences in the third world. Her initial impression, in fact, was that Barry was an Indonesian, attending Oxy as part of foreign exchange program. She was impressed though by his command of English. When the student body boycotted classes in protest of South African Apartheid, Barry wass the featured speaker. By the following year, he’d been accepted to Columbia and had transferred. Hmmm…

For our family, our Latin American sojourn was all the education we needed on the consequences of Socialism in countries rich in natural resources like Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. For Ann Dunham & her son, it looks like they drew different lessons.

I don’t think it was the upbringing alone that made him hate what he thought America was doing to the Third World. I think it was the upbringing along with his mother’s goal of saving traditional culture in third-world countries. He interpreted what he saw from an entirely different set of assumptions — those of the educated adults around him.

An interesting piece and a good one. I rarely see the connection between Obama’s third-world upbringing and his seeming distaste for what many of us would think of as thoroughly and traditionally “American.” However, I must agree with the preceding comment by Mr. Bakker that the last pagagraph on page 1 misses the mark. Obama was, in a sense (though perhaps not the sense he had in mind when he wrote the passage quoted…or dictated something like it which his ghost-writer paraphrased). The misery and squalor of housing project ghettoes owes much to the lack of the kind of order which comes from established family units where values and standards of behavior are passed down generation by generation.

There’s a lot to be said for the virtues of traditional society, which permits very little choice. For the most part, though, traditional society is toast, like it or not. It is possible to maintain a parody of traditional Arabian society in the Magic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, at enormous expense, although it is doubtful that this will endure another generation. The Jews manage to recreate aspects of traditional society by surrounding it with cutting-edge modern entrepreneurship and military techniques. Sex, drugs and rock and roll are the future of most of the Third World, and nothing will stop that.

“Sex, drugs and rock and roll are the future of most of the Third World, and nothing will stop that”.

Concur, but it won’t be the fun variety. I’d say the “third world” future will be more like this rock and roll:

Paul Simon The Boy In The Bubble Lyrics (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/p/paul+simon/the+boy+in+the+bubble_20105881.html)
It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby, don’t cry
Don’t cry

It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby, don’t cry
Don’t cry

It’s a turn-around jump shot
It’s everybody jump start
It’s every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
The Boy in the Bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart

And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby, don’t cry
Don’t cry
—

His Third World upbringing? Feh. He lived in a urban setting in Indonesia between the ages of six and ten. He has as much knowledge and appreciation of Third World culture as he does of rural Wyoming. What he knows of both is what he imagines he knows. Basically, he’s a city-boy, and always has been, with a rather limited experience of the world at large.

While I understand why Americans would naturally feel…uneasy eating a dog, its not really accurate to imply that countries that eat them, do so just because they are the 3rd world. Its a very popular dish in South Korea…pretty much as a far from being a 3rd world nation as you can get. I’ve had it twice and while it was “weird” consuming an animal I was raised around, its honestly not much different than growing up on a farm and consuming livestock. I mean honestly, I love eating pork and beef, but I recognize the dietary restrictions of others such as Jews, Hindus, and Muslims.

I grew up eating raw oysters…which I am assured most people find gross.

I have said before that I don’t care if there is a video of Barack being born on a Hawaiian beach with Mt Kilauea in the background and his mother surrounded by hula dancers dancing to Don Ho. He is, and always will be an alien resident of the White House.

What an astounding mistake America made. It is nearly beyond belief. It could only have happened with the vast majority of the media colluding on his behalf.

Whipsnade: As my dear old grandfather Litvak said (just before they swung the trap), he said “You can’t cheat an honest man. Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump.”

However helpful the media was to his campaign in 2008, Obama understood old grandfather Litvak’s advice. As I said at the time, I’ll repeat: A vote for Obama was the cheapest indulgence and greatest self-indulgence. You can’t cheat an honest man.

I lived in Argentina until I was 27 years old. I arrived in the USA in 1982 and I can tell you that this country IS TURNING into something very much like Argentina. I do believe that the “powers that be” experimented with Argentina what they were going to do later with the US. The mighty USA is being destroyed from the inside. I believe the destruction process now in progress began around 1968.

I don’t know what will be Obama’s ultimate fate in this world or the next (assuming he actually is a human being with a soul and is not a purely demonic construct). But given the well-known principle of “what goes around, comes around” I thought of the ultimate fate of another tyrant, over two millenia ago:

I am not sure the US voters do realize even after 4 years of disastrous guidance how perilous it is to cling on with such a character ( BHO) in the White House.The liberal medias dictates the narrative, they play quite well with the ” repentance ” stigma that the common US citizen should bear and assume.On the opposite Romney still does not show up as a grassroot american , as a doer, as someone who made it and WILL INSPIRE ALL HIS FELLOW CITIZENS TO DO IT.

Excellent perspective. As I try to explain to people, the Obama story is not about the 6-10 year old, it’s about the grown man who has run his whole life with a goal of being able to deny his radicalism, yet at 33 years of age decided to put that story in a book.

Nice piece; it certainly adds to the ever growing, and always quite negative, portrait we have of BHO. Given his alleged touchy feely side one assumes he should have understood before he ran for president that he was imminently unsuited to become one because of his attitudes. There’s was more than enough known about him to strongly suggest that he would immolate, as he indeed has, on the altar of his leftist ideology. Even his parents’ background should have broken through the mental barriers at some point and given Barack pause for thought. So, in the remaining six months of his presidency O is forced to fall back on what comes natural to leftists the world over: lie. In Obama’s case it’s ramp up the lies like you never have in your life and really reveal the inner sociopath.

Indonesia is a muslim-majority country. In fact, it is the largest muslim nation on earth. Under Islam, dogs are ‘haram’ – that is, unclean. Obama had a muslim father and a muslim step-father. By eating dog meat, he commited a grave sin under Islam. He is lucky in that muslims don’t form a significant minority voting bloc in the US, unlike Jews, Blacks and Hispanics. But in the Arab world, he is toast.

I appreciate your insights into what you feel makes Obama tick. I’m curious, though, on your view of his wife.

She lacks the international background. Though it is clear she grew up resenting America for giving her so much through affirmative action policies rather than through her own merit she was not a child of Ann Dunham with time spent in the company of Frank Marshall Davis.

Cue up Wall of Voodoo/Stan Ridgway, ‘Pick It Up and Put It In Your Pocket’

‘it’s dog eat dog, and cat eat mouse, and mouse eat cheese, the cheese just smells!
The warning systems ring but help won’t come!
And all the warning signs, and the walking sticks,
And the hidden punches and the cowards’ tricks
Say you’ve got a big mouthful now!
pick it up and put it in your pocket, or somebody else will!
Pick it up and put it in your pocket, or somebody else just will!’

Also, you can substitute horse meat or venison, not pork. Pig is a filthy animal but that has nothing to do with it. Pork in smoked sausage is fantastic but raw it tastes funny. Of course I taste the raw pork when seasoning sausage but that’s only in small quantities.

Very useful comment on Obama’s time at Occidental college above. The commenter’s sister wasn’t the only one who thought Obama was a foreign exchange student. So did the postman for Bill Ayers parents in Illinois.

This is why I think Obama is a Muslim. The man who taipught him to eat dog and snake and tiger also taught him how to fight back against bullies. He taught Obama how to be a man, a Muslim, according to Indonesian lights, man. Therefore, it is quite logical to construe that Obama followed the footsteps of his new hero into an appreciation of the mosque. If he could, on Lolo Soetoro’s instructions become knowledgeable about the different textures of non-Western animal meat, then he could also, from Lolo, learn to appreciate the mosque, the prayers, and the call to prayer. He could learn to become a Muslim because Lolo was a Muslim. He knew enough about Lolo’s practice to distinguish it from other types of Islam. As a child, he would have acquired that knowledge by practice. Therefore, this bit on dog eating reveals way more about Barack Obama than he would ever have wanted us to know.

Obama doesn’t strike me as particularly religious. Since Islam is really nothing more than Totalitarian Communism with a real God, and Obama’s Chicago church was just an Anti-American Communist brand of Christianity, Occam’s razor tells me that Obama is a Communist, just like his Mother.

Yrs, I concur that Obama is a Communist. I’ve been saying so for a long while now. Whether he got it from his mother or Frank Marshall is debatable. However, I give the nod to Marshall cuz Obama does not like or respect women. He’s gor a very Musloim attitude to us.

I cannot forbare a “50s Joke: American Tourists were taken to tne Moscow Subway. Unbelievable magnificance; crystal chandeliers,mosaics with semi-preciou stones,gold leafed walls. After 45 minutes the American asked “where is

our train?” The intourist guide said;”What about the negros in the South?”

With respect, Mr. Goldman is mistaken: Dinesh D’Souza does NOT believe that “President” Soetoro is a socialist — in fact, his book _The Roots of Obama’s Rage_ vigorously denies it!

D’Souza’s thesis is that the “President” is an anti-colonialist, and under that assumption many of his words and actions that otherwise seem inconsistent make perfect sense. Even better, many of his future actions/reactions can be predicted.

“And yet for all that poverty [in the Indonesian marketplace], there remained in their lives a discernible order, a tapestry of trading routes and middlemen, bribes to pay and customs to observe, the habits of a generation played out every day beneath the bargaining and the noise and the swirling dust. It was the absence of such coherence that made a place like [the Chicago housing projects] so desperate.” . . .

The Chicago housing projects were a place where the GOVERNMENT was attempting to establish order, Though the government may not have abandoned bribery and middlemen, the people who lived in the Projects where Obama worked as a Community Organizer were not involved in most of the government interactions which affected their lives. After that experience, how did Obama think that directing peoples’ lives more and more from Washington wouldl help establish the kinds of natural interactions between people which led to the cultural coherence which he admired in Indonesia? He said in an interview years ago that he had decided that one thing Alinsky got wrong was the idea that community organizers should “push power down to the people” while the organizers remained in the background. Obama said that he had learned on the job that this was impossible, and that community organizing requires a strong leader.

There is a disconnect somewhere between the natural tapestry of life among poor Indonesians which Obama admired and his supposed vision for transforming America.

I suspect that a better explanation is that he does not believe any of that stuff about the cohesive culture of the South Asian jungle, and had never given the idea any conscious thought until his Weatherman ghostwriter delivered the manuscript to him and he read those poetic, lyrical descriptions for the first time.

This is the kind of “noble savage” magical thinking that resonates in the Mind of the Left, so he’d immediately have said to himself “now, why didn’t I think of that myself? It’s so obviously true.” And from then on, it became his.

I’m guessing that Ayers recorded casual conversations with Obama and compiled them into an imagined narrative history that loosely matched what had actually happened. The important thing, of course, was the narrative adhered to the worldview of the Mind of the Left, so it will all ring true to any Lefty, and likewise smell nasty to everyone else–at least to anyone who actually examines what is being said.

Mr. Goldman, there is one thing I am curious about. If President Obama likes the Third World so much, then why is he keeping our soldiers in Afghanistan? I would guess that he would want them out as soon as possible. Could you explain how this aspect of things fits in with what you are describing?

“why is he keeping our soldiers in Afghanistan?” – Because BHO adopted Afghanistan as the good “war of necessity” during the 2008 to contrast it with Iraq as Bush/McCain’s bad “war of choice”.

The really despicable thing is that BHO preened in public about making the “tough” decision to fight a COIN campaign in ‘stan w/a troop “surge” and then failed to give commanders the number of troops they requested (at least 10,000 fewer than requested according to media reports) for simultaneous offensives in the South and the East. Thus there was a 2011 offense in the South against Mullah Omar’s Taliban but US forces in the East had to fight on a shoestring against the Haqqanis. Our forces in the East in 2011 soaked up lots of casualties in a holding action. A reportedly planned 2012 offense in the East has apparently been significantly reduced in size and scope to accommodate BHO’s accelerated drawdown (which actually began in the middle of the 2011 Fighting Season with troops (as reported in the media) pulled off the line from Parwan Province). The undiminished strength of the Haqqanis in the East was demonstrated by their recent simultaneous atacks in Kabul, Logar, Ghazni and Nangahar.

I’m not a big proponent of US operations in ‘stan (although I am fond of the country and its people) but it’s hard to see BHO’s half-hearted surge as anything but a political act w/no lasting effect on the battlefield and a lot of soldiers and marines being killed or maimed for no good reason.

Spengler: “It guards his right flank against criticism and avoids friction with the national security establishment”</i.

You seem to imply here that the "national security establishment" has a mind of its own, to which Obama has chosen to defer. But now I wonder for what reason does the "national security establishment" want to stay in Afghanistan? I wonder this when I consider all the expenses being added to our already broke government, and especially since I can't imagine what worthwhile objectives there are to achieve. After we leave in year X, I will bet the farm that things will rapidly revert back to what they were before: a backwards tribalist country in a state of never-ending civil war.

Dear David, while I agree with you wholeheartedly, I would like to point out that in many parts of Indonesia dog meat is a delicacy, not food for the poor. In fact, there are many restaurants specialized in serving these dishes (if possible, this proves your point even more).

A picture of Obama biting off the head of a smelt (Chicago thing) is floating around but it may not be authentic. But if it is then it means that he will do anything if you double dare. Chowhound has many references to the traditions associated with smelting in Chicago. Could be the next braking story…

There was a willful ignorance of then candidate Barack Hussein Obama’s background and beliefs during the 2008 election. That was to be expected, given the mainstream media’s open complicity in his globo-socialist campaign.

With this in mind, one must thank Goldman for this essay. The only question it leaves to me is this: why isn’t Goldman hosting a prime time show on Fox? He’d be so much better than the half-baked hosts who populate the channel now. And, have you noiticed how little turnover there is there? Oh, I forgot. Ailes would never have such a person with such content. That just wouldn’t do.

Faux News is there to hold the place. You don’t want some Buckley, or some Goldwater to start a real conservative TV network. Folks like O’Reilly and Hanitty are there to confirm the concept of the ignorant/prejudiced/obnoxious conservative. In that sense they are working for the liberal cause sort of in a ricochet way. Think about it.

Europeans and especially the Anglosphere, have had a long love affair with the noble savage. In a demotic age, Obama is the penultimate noble savage. From Captain James Cook’s 2nd voyage (in William Hodges 1744-1797, the Art of Exploration, National Maritime Museum, 2004): “Omai . . . from Huahine, was brought to England by Lieutenant Tobias Furneaux on the Adventure. Adopted by Sir Joseph Banks and the Earl of Sandwich, he was introduced to fashionable London society, including the royal family . . .”

As I heard the story, Anne Dunham was an obedient child who faithfully followed the direction set for her by her parents, both of whom seem to have been employed-directly or indirectly-by the State Department. Anne Dunham’s elitist leftism and her perversely exclusive attraction to third world men of color was inspired by Barack Obama’s paternal grandparents.

Obama’s blood father was mentored by Obama’s paternal Grandfather. Grandpa Dunham all but physically shoved his daughter Anne into bed with his Kenyan protege.

Anyway, that’s the the story I heard, David. Writer flogging her biography of Obama Sr. on Book Beat one Sunday. But I was channel surfing and only half listening. Maybe I got it wrong.

As for the painful disruptions caused by globalization, Barack Obama Knew none of them. Every disruption Obama ever experienced improved his lot.

David you need to put that string of assertions in scare quotes or append with a /s tag.

For it is bunkum pretty much across the board.

=======

Simply:

The Dunham’s were hooked into the CIA and its various front organizations ( the ones the KGB was howling about forever ) like USAID apparently all the way back to year zero, ( 1947 ) and before.

The CIA is larded to the gills with Leftists — and always has been. It recruited from the Ivies even in its OSS era.

Barry was biologically conceived circa election night 1960 — almost to the hour. Hence, his birth date: August 4, 1961.

Odds are overwhelming that Frank Marshall Davis was and is his biological father. Obama, Sr. can’t be co-located with Stanley during that all-critical time period. Whereas FMD spent election night in the Dunham house until a late hour — awaiting the vote from his old stomping ground — Chicago!

FMD has long written up the tale of his tryst with a young white gal. So he’s on the record WRT having an ‘open marriage.’

As Barry reached his teens, Stanley returned him to Hawaii — and the arms of his biological father and his grandparents. This is why she felt free to carry on her CIA missions with a clear mind.

It also explains why FMD — uniquely for Barry — was willing to spend hour upon hour chatting with him — and why Barry just HAD to go to Chicago to enter political activity.

You might note the scant interest in Kenyan politics and history. ( comparatively ) [ Barry did campaign in Kenya while a sitting US Senator - for the muslim thug. After defeat at the polls, an anti-Christian pogrom swept through the nation killing hundreds! The MSM (D) faded Barry's connection to the terrorist-politician. ]

In any case, in Dreams Barry tells us that he does not believe that his parents ever married. There are no tales, pictures or gifts to evidence any legal bond between Obama, Sr. and Stanley! HIS WORDS.

Of course, neither Obama, Sr. nor FMD could legally obtain a marriage license: they were both fulsomely married at the time of Barry’s conception! Indeed. the US State Department released Harvard documents detailing how Obama, Sr. was KICKED OUT OF HARVARD for bigamy — only months before he might have attained his PhD!

This, and the Dunham CIA connection, is why Barry had an inside track to get into Harvard Law School.

What’s in a name? I’ll tellya what’s in a name: Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, there’s a name. Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, nobel laureate Yasir’s paternal uncle. He’s the dude who wrote Adolph to tell him how much he dug his style, his program. The good Sheik was invited to Berlin and went on to pull off a well documented and very productive tenure there, helping set up an all Moslem SS Division and playing a role in the Holocaust. Remember that the Holy Prophet said, “Just kill every Jew in the country,” and the way things turned out the Sheik saw his sacred command, taken from chapter 33 verse 21 of the Holy Ko-Ran, to have the Germans emulate the Prophet.

You’re right: naming is one of the first, central, and most key transactions in making history.

On Saturday, April 28, 2012, for the fifth consecutive year, the Philadelphia Armenian Genocide Walk will take place, providing an opportunity for the entire Philadelphia community to gather to commemorate the 97th anniversary of the Genocide, and educate the public on Turkish denial of the atrocities committed against the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1918.

“Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
[August 22, 1939]

My decision to attack Poland was arrived at last spring. Originally, I feared that the political constellation would compel me to strike simultaneously at England, Russia, France, and Poland. Even this risk would have had to be taken.

Ever since the autumn of 1938, and because I realized that Japan would not join us unconditionally and that Mussolini is threatened by that nit-wit of a king and the treasonable scoundrel of a crown prince, I decided to go with Stalin.

In the last analysis, there are only three great statesmen in the world, Stalin, I, and Mussolini. Mussolini is the weakest, for he has been unable to break the power of either the crown or the church. Stalin and I are the only ones who envisage the future and nothing but the future. Accordingly, I shall in a few weeks stretch out my hand to Stalin at the common German-Russian frontier and undertake the redistribution of the world with him.

Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter — with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It’s a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me.

I have issued the command — and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad — that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness — for the present only in the East — with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?

The text above is the English version of the German document handed to Louis P. Lochner in Berlin. It first appeared in Lochner’s What About Germany? (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1942), pp. 1-4. The Nuremberg Tribunal later identified the document as L-3 or Exhibit USA-28. Two other versions of the same document appear in Appendices II and III. For the German original cf. Akten zur Deutschen Auswartigen Politik 1918-1945, Serie D, Band VII, (Baden-Baden, 1956), pp. 171-172.

I have this theory about Fictive Reality. That’s when a fake fact becomes so widely accepted that it may as well be true. Often a Fictive Reality can be manifested as law and even military operations. Most don’t even know about what happened on that march, and most of those aware of the millions dead more or less accept the fuzzy explanation about the whole thing being a tragic logistical snafu. But many know the score about the Armenian holocaust; that event was so bad, so big, that it teeters on the edge of fictive, with the reality refusing to submit.

On the other hand, there could be a little good news in all this for Ozzy Osbourne. Of course, as a Brit, he can’t be couldn’t be president. But some have proposed amending the Constitution to allow non-native Americans to run. In the meantime, Ozzy can at least rest assured that his having bitten the head off a bat should not hurt his chances.